All I Want for Christmas is Q
by VampirePam
Summary: When Q dreads facing his former tormentors at a university Christmas party without the protection of his top-secret occupation, Bond offers to accompany him as his date. One would think two of Britain's best spies could have anticipated what would happen next.
1. It's Beginning to Look Like Christmas

James nearly jogged down the hallway to Q's office, chased by a relentless chorus of "Jingle Bells" over the loudspeaker. Though the holidays had been strictly chased from the confines of the office during _her _tenure, the overeager new M had decided to go in...a different direction. James was hoping that Q's office would provide him with some much needed peace and quiet.

"Quartermaster, you haven't seen my exploding cufflinks, have you?" James asked as he ducked into his office, gesturing to his gaping shirt cuffs.

"Desk," Q murmured absently. "Borrowed them. Needed more nitroglycerine." He immediately returned his full attention to the email on his computer screen and heaved a heavy sigh.

"Bad news from Moneypenny?" James inquired, slipping the first cufflink into place with extreme caution. "I _told_ her we didn't have enough intel on the damn Moroccan job."

"No, no, nothing like that." Q waved him off. He ran an agitated hand through his already unkempt hair and strained the springs of his office chair into leaning back as far as they could go. "As a matter of fact, Morocco's going swimmingly. We may have agents back in country as soon as next week."

"Then am I to take it that sigh signifies a problem of a more...delicate, personal nature?" James wasn't sure why he was asking - it was surely none of his business. He put it down to not wanting to go back into the hallway.

"Don't you have a secretary to seduce or something?" Q snapped. When James rose to leave, Q placed a careful hand on his sleeve and interjected, "Oh, I'm sorry. It's not your fault. It's just...not a problem you'd understand."

Something about the combination of the sad, little Christmas tree perched on the corner of Q's desk and the way its lights sent different glowing colors dancing over the miserable expression on his face had James perching on the side of the desk. "Try me."

Q looked him up and down for a long moment, as if coming to some sort of decision. Finally, he threw his hands up and declared, "Oh, what the hell. Not as if it could make things worse. He whirled the computer screen in James' direction. "Read it and weep, as they say."

James took the next few minutes to peruse what seemed at first, second, and third glances to be a perfectly ordinary invitation to the King's College Alumni Holiday Party. He returned his attention to Q. "I'm sorry, but I don't quite see-"

"No, of course _you_ don't!" Q buried his head in his hands in despair. The half-sobbed words that followed were incomprehensible to James.

"I, uh, didn't quite catch..." He was beginning to sorely regret having agreed to help with this apparently dire problem.

"_You _wouldn't have to show your face at your old college's holiday party without a date!" Q nearly shouted. "_You _would walk in with half of England's cricket team on each arm and make Roger Davies absolutely _chartreuse_ with envy!"

"Q," James said with what he considered admirable patience. "Who is Roger Davies and why do you feel the need to make him...chartreuse?"

"Only the self-appointed Chief Inquisitor and Torture Master at King's College!" Q was as close to hysterical as James had ever seen him. "Now he sends me this invitation out of nowhere, _daring _me to come and show him that I'm still the same loser he used to push off punts into the Cam."

"Surely being the youngest head of research and development MI-6 has ever had disqualifies you from the loser category?" James reached out a hand toward Q's shoulder, before thinking the better of it and withdrawing.

"Well yes, to _me,_" Q acknowledged. "It's all well and good that I can look _myself_ in the mirror in the morning and know that I've made it, that I could have Davies and his cronies sent to darkest Abyssinia with the touch of a button if I so chose. A fat lot of good that's going to be at a do like this, where MI-6 demands I have to tell them I sell bloody _insurance_!"

"And you thought showing up with someone, I don't know, flashy would persuade them to look past the insurance?" James was relieved the pieces were finally fitting together into some sort of picture.

"Got it in one." Q took another long look at the computer screen, then shoved his mouse violently aside. "Oh, why am I even talking about this anymore? It's no use. I'll simply tell him I'm not going and let him laugh with his buddies at the club about what a coward I am."

"You could do that..." An idea was beginning to take shape in James' brain. "Or..."

"I like the sound of _or_." For the first time since they'd begun this insane conversation, he looked marginally less despondent. "Do enlighten me, 007."

"It's simple, really," James said, and it was. On paper, anyway. "Take me as your date."

"Take..._you_?" Q's jaw dropped nearly to floor.

"Well, I know I'm not the youngest model on the floor, but it's got to be better than not going at all." James looked away, trying not to take Q's shock too personally...and failing miserably.

Q's lips were on his in a flash, and were gone just as quickly. "Better? It's _brilliant._" James was grateful that Q was too busy dancing a little jig around the office while humming 'Deck the Halls' to notice the shocked stupor it took him several minutes to shake off.

"You, my friend, are a true knight in shining armor. That's it! I'll get you knighted. Come next year's honours lists, we'll all be calling you Sir Bond. Oh, I can't _wait _to see Davies' face. You will wear the tuxedo, won't you? You look so terrifically dashing in the tuxedo."

"Sure, Q..." Now it was James who was mumbling, a hand running absently over his lips. "Whatever you want." His stomach was lurching in a familiar sensation - on a mission, it usually meant that he'd missed something obvious...and would soon be paying the penalty for it.

But this was a Christmas party - what was the worst that could happen? Somewhere in the back of his mind, a treacherous voice whispered, "Famous last words..."

James sighed, quietly enough that Q wouldn't hear.He was so fucked.


	2. God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen

"A loop here, a twist there, and..." Moneypenny's precise fingers smoothed and pressed the silk into position. "Perfect! Not that it's going to be for long if you keep fidgeting like that."

"It's wrong! Can't you see it's all wrong?!" Q reached up to fiddle with his tie, but upon receiving a stern look from Moneypenny, settled for buttoning and unbuttoning his cuffs.

"Should I be taking that as a criticism of my tailoring technique - which would be very, _very _unwise - or a veiled reference to something deeper going on here?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, Moneypenny." Q sighed and and gave her quick a peck on the cheek. "Ignore the not-so-dulcet tones of me descending slowly into madness."

"Come on, then." Her hand encircled his wrist before not-so-gently tugging him toward the couch. "Talk."

"Oh, it's pointless, isn't it?" Q leaned back with another sigh and covered his face with his hands. "I've not only dug my own grave, I've engraved the bloody headstone. Nothing to do now but lie in it."

"Is it really as dramatic as all that?" Moneypenny arched one perfect brow in his direction. "I mean, it _is_ only a Christmas party."

Q opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again just as quickly. He repeated the process two or three times, to Moneypenny's obvious amusement, before settling on a deadly serious pronouncement of: "You can't laugh. Or tell anyone. Especially him."

"All right." Though her expression briefly wavered, it was soon schooled into submission. "I promise."

"Well, Moneypenny, the fact of the matter is...I _may_ have a tiny, miniscule, infinitesimal bit of a...a _thing _for a certain agent." Wringing his hands, Q looked at her anxiously.

"I'm sorry, I thought you were going to tell me something I _didn't _know." Perhaps feeling a twinge of guilt at Q groaning and burying his face in the back of the couch, she reached out to take his hand.

"Look - has it occurred to that constantly churning brain of yours that _maybe_ you're overcomplicating a simple situation?" She patted his hand companionably.

"Simple?'" Q demanded. He could think of no moniker less well suited to the series of contradictory thoughts and emotions currently ricocheting around his brain. "Simple? My dear Moneypenny, this situation is many, many things, but let me assure you, _simple _is not one of them.

"Well, let's make it a little simpler, then? You go to the party with 007 - pro?" Her manner was patient, but firm: a teacher imparting a lesson to a lagging student.

"Not having to explain why I made him put on a penguin suit, then cancelled at the last minute, for one," Q muttered. He snuck a glance at Moneypenny to see if he was due for a reprimand.

"That's the spirit, love." She skimmed her fingers through his hair, righting the strands he'd sent flying in his agitation.

"Not to mention it _would_ finally show Roger Davies who's the real success." The image of dancing the night away in Bond's arms, his old nemesis watching on in envy, did hold an unmistakable allure.

"Nothing quite like sweet revenge, just in time for Christmas." Moneypenny's clever fingers continued to smooth and straighten the bits he had rumpled.

"He can be quite good company, actually, when he leaves off the stoic, man of mystery bit.'" Q's irrational flights of fancy about the sort of company they could be keeping together were surely irrelevant to the discussion, so he neglected to mention them.

"So, to sum up: on the pro side, we have you, at a fancy party, dancing the night away with a gorgeous man you fancy, while you rub it in the noses of every bastard who made your school days a living hell?"

"Put like that, it's rather persuasive, isn't it?" Q sighed. Was he actually considering going through with this?

"Which brings me, I suppose, to one question: what exactly is the problem?" Moneypenny crossed her arms and regarded him expectantly.

"The problem," Q mused, tapping his fingers together, "is that spending a holiday party with _him_, Cambridge, snow, and that tuxedo is liable to give me a nervous breakdown. You know the sort of thing - manifests in symptoms like kissing the wrong people at the wrong time?" On a snow-covered bridge. Under some convenient mistletoe. In the front seat of his Aston Martin. Temptation was omnipresent.

"From where I'm sitting, it seems like 007 is hauling himself a couple of hours down icy roads on a chilly evening to go and make you look good. Maybe he wouldn't be as wrong a person as you think." Moneypenny's expression was infuriatingly inscrutable. Q wished, not for the first time, that he was half as good with people as he was with computers.

"I suppose it's too late to cancel, anyway." Q took stock of his reflection in the mirror, instinctively reaching to make an adjustment, only to find that Moneypenny's ministrations had left him looking impeccable. Terrified, but impeccable.

He was just weighing the merits of faking his own death when there came a light knocking at the door. His subsequent lunge for the back door was swiftly intercepted by Moneypenny. "Oh no, you don't. That's quite enough nonsense for one night. Now, are you going to open that door and face him like a adult, or will I be dragging you?"

Feeling once again like a petulant child, Q shuffled to the front door, took a deep breath, and opened it. The breath left him all at once, with the force of a punch to the gut. There, standing on his doorstep, gold hair glistening with snow, was an immaculately tailored Bond. In his hand, a single, long-stemmed red rose, also dusted with snow.

In that moment, Q did something he hadn't attempted since the tender age of five: he prayed. Specifically, he prayed for a Christmas miracle. With Bond looking like that, Q feeling like he was, and a whole night of festivities ahead of them, he was bloody well going to need one.


End file.
